Mahmoud Reza Banki Gets 2 ½ Years For Havaleh

By Benjamin Weiser, NY Times

Aug 16, 2010, New York, NY – “An Iranian immigrant who had earned a Ph.D. from Princeton and aspired to a career in biotechnology was sentenced  to two and a half years in prison on Monday for violating the Iran trade embargo by using an informal money-transfer system known as hawala to move millions of dollars between the United States and Iran.

The defendant, Mahmoud Reza Banki, 34, must also pay the government about $3.3 million, which prosecutors say was the amount of money involved in the illegal transactions. “

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Click here for PAAIA’s article on Havaleh.